Kolkata: Two days after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during an administrative meeting in North Bengal on Wednesday, directed health officials to ensure that pharmacies display a list of fake medicines for public awareness, the Bengal government issued a notification on Friday asking wholesalers to verify that the manufacturers or distributors they source medicines from are legitimate.
The notification said that the wholesalers will have to check how long the licenses of the companies they were buying medicines from are valid. In case the wholesalers were buying medicines from the companies in other states, they will also have to examine the bank details of these companies. The wholesalers will also check the GST number of the companies and if they are taking GST credit. While buying the medicines from the wholesalers, the buyers will have to compulsorily scan the QR codes of those medicines which are in question.
Meanwhile, as a part of its routine regulatory surveillance, the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) recently published a monthly list of ‘Not of Standard Quality’ (NSQ) and spurious drugs on its portal. In April 2025, the Central Drugs Laboratories identified 60 drug samples as NSQ, while State Drugs Testing Laboratories identified 136 more, totaling 196 drug samples that failed to meet quality standards. These drugs include some tablets meant for treating gas and acidity, paracetamol, eye drop, anemia-related drugs.
Incidentally, the State Drug Control has recently published a notification mentioning the batch number of about 25 drugs and asked the chemists and wholesalers to stop selling. These drugs failed to clear the quality tests as well.